Tips On Getting A New Tattoo: How to Find a Good Tattoo Artist

1. Make sure your tattooer has tattoos. You wouldn’t want to buy a hair piece from a bald guy not wearing one. Now having tattoos doesn’t make a tattooer good or bad, its just a good start.

2. Do research. Go into some shops and ask to see the individual portfolios, and actually look at them, don’t just flip the pages. Each and every tattooer is different, pay attention. Or with the large amount of good artists showing their work all over the internet these days (80% are bad to terrible, find the 20%), after some looking you should be able to start seeing the difference between good and bad tattoos, the quality in the technical aspect and also the direction of vision in the artwork. There are a few different general types of tattooing; Traditional, Japanese, Black and Grey, Tribal, and new school, for example. In these styles you should be able to find the one that suites you best, or that your most drawn to. Then do the research and find the guys that are really doing great work in those styles that you like best. In my personal opinion a good tattooer can do most any style exceptionally well. The craft of tattooing has a great part to do with the technical application and not always fully in the actual design, as many people have their own design they may want translated into a tattoo. And don’t worry you Don’t need a deep meaning or tragic accident to get one. Sometimes it’s just great to feel a little more like a individual, or capture a moment in time, or get a BFF tattoo with your BFF. No reason is a perfectly good reason to get a tattoo as well.

3. Cost should be the last concern. Most great artist are very fair in price anyway, you just have to find them (refer to # 2) Sometimes you pay a little more for; the history of a artist, (guys that have been doing it a long time full of stories and energy, which has a great non tangible value) or you pay for the hype that the artist may have created for himself, a brand name so to speak, or sometime just the fact that they are really fucking good. The amount of so called ” tattoo artist” that have flooded my business, the average public perception of cost and more importantly quality has been dumbed down. People are more apt to pay $150 for a nice meal which they are gonna crap out latter then spend even $100 on a tattoo that will have for ever, think about that. #common sense

4. Cleanliness. Even though I know that there is hundreds of tattoo shops in every city that should Not exists ( due to lack of talent, passion, and respect) I believe most shops to be very sanitary these days, and health risks are at a all time low. Most shops use single use needles, tubes, ink caps, and autoclaves.

5. Let the tattooer do their job. Once you have found “your guy” and after giving him a basic idea or sketch, let him do what he does and please, don’t nit pick the design.

My personal all time favorite tattooer is Chris Garver aka “the wizard”, I love his style and respect his ability tremendously.